About Us
This website is an ongoing project managed by Trausti and Sonam.
Sonam
I was born in the province of Amdo which is in eastern Tibet. At the age of ten I came to India to get an education. I went to the Tibetan Children's Village School in Dharamsala, the seat of the exiled Tibetan Government in India and graduated from there in 1999. I eventually moved to Canada and currently teach Tibetan to a few Westerners in Vancouver, Canada. If you are interested in studying the Tibetan language with me, then feel free to email me for more information.
Trausti
I was born in a small town in Northern Iceland where you won't find anything at all related to Tibet. In spite of that, I discovered Tibet in the late eighties when I came across a book written by His Holiness The Dalai Lama. Back in 1997, when traveling in Nepal, I got the idea of studying the Tibetan language for the first time. I picked up a Tibetan grammar book in a bookstore in Katmandu and a few months after returning from the trip, started studying on my own. Since then I have been studying on and off, sometimes taking long breaks. Later I moved to Vancouver, Canada were I met Sonam, who I studied with for over a year. During that time I decided to start a website dedicated to the language, and The Tibetan Language Student is what came out of that.In November of 2003 I went to Dharamsala, India for over five months, and during that time I had private lessons which both enhanced my knowledge of the language and resulting in improvement of this site. I also came in contact with a number of people who have contributed to the site; the best example of this is the Tibetan Texts sections.
Today I try to devote as much time as I can, both studying on my own and adding to the site. My main interest is in the spoken language, but I have found that I'm becoming more and more interested in literary Tibetan. To me studying and promoting the Tibetan language is all about showing support for the Tibetan people and their struggle against the Chinese occupation of their country. The language is extremely important for the Tibetans when it comes to reclaiming their country. The language is one of the bigger factors that define Tibet as a nation.